


The Love In Your Heart

by messier51



Series: The Sum of Me (Lich Verse) [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Multi, Undead Quentin Coldwater, Universe Alteration, an unfortunate lack of chickens, canon compliant through 4.13, fixit fic, lich verse, non canonical character undeath, non canonical good communication, post 4.13 (The Magicians), qualice, qualiot, queliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 18:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18666364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messier51/pseuds/messier51
Summary: Quentin Coldwater went to his death believing Eliot Waugh didn't love him and wouldn't choose him, so when he watched Eliot offer a peach to the bonfire in his memory, it left him angry and wanting answers. When he stepped through the door in the underworld in his heightened emotional state, he accidentally became a lich.Now, with Alice's help, he's finally starting to figure out his lich magic.





	The Love In Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This story happens about six months after The Light In Your Eyes (the first fic in the series).

Quentin had stopped reading the treatise on obscure glitches in horomancy spells (and how to avoid them) three minutes ago. Eliot and Alice were arguing about ethical use of magic again. They’d had arguments like this before, and this wouldn’t be the last time. Neither of them would admit it if he asked but they had fun pulling apart complex ideas with each other.

Quentin wouldn’t interrupt that for the world.

Part of him was a little jealous; he’d kind of like the two of them to pull him apart sometime. A little jealous that they found a comfortable friendship to share. Jealous that every time he was alone with Alice, it felt like trying to pound nails into boards with his bare hands, and failing.

Being with Eliot was like falling in love for the first time, all over again, but easier. Alice was more challenging--but that was part of the appeal. Quentin wasn't sure what Alice wanted now, and that was okay. He could wait, if that meant they could find some kind of trust again.

And they had a million more important things to worry about. Alice spent more of her time at the Library than she did at Brakebills. Eliot and Margo were trying to overthrow an immortal Dark King in Fillory, while also trying to figure out how to contact Josh and Fen 300 years in the past. So far, the revolution was the easy part.

“Quentin, are you okay?” Alice asked. They were both looking at him, now, and he must have been watching too obviously. “You’re eyes are… sparking.”

“Huh? I’m fine--what do you mean--” Quentin left his book face-down on the couch and went to find a mirror. Alice trailed after him.

Since they performed the ritual, Quentin’s eyes had stopped overflowing with liquid blue light. Now, the luminescence was confined to his irises, _mostly_. Quentin's ring absorbed latent magic energy in his system so that he wouldn't be overwhelmed by it. According to Alice, he should have been able to cast the stored magical power as spells.

Except, it’d been months, and Quentin still hadn’t figured out how to control his strange new magic. He tried. It felt different than it used it to, more amorphous, more personal. Every time he tried to access it, he got stuck.

Quentin watched as glowing blue lines traced outward from his eyes, one at a time, faded almost immediately, and threw sparks when the magical currents shot forward. He was glad they had the physical kids cottage to themselves. He wouldn’t want to explain why his eyes were malfunctioning to stray students.

Alice checked his temperature and then pulled his right hand into hers. For a moment he could taste her worry and smell the calm reservoir of her love and the rough edged excitement at a new development in Quentin's condition. He pulled his hand away--he didn't want to know.

She cast a magic-viewing spell and studied his eyes and then his hands.

“I think your phylactery is overloading. It's too warm. There's too much ambient magic still, and your body re-processes it and stores it in the ring. Whatever feedback loop you've got between your eyes, your magic, your shade and the ring, the problems are manifesting in your eyes.”

“Lemme guess, if I figure out how to do magic, I can fix it.”

“Each spell you do should use up some of the magic power, yes.”

“That's great then. Except, oh yeah, I still can't do magic.”

“We'll figure it out, Q.”

“Will we? Because it doesn't seem like we ever even try to talk about anything other than the Library, Fillory, and the excess magic.”

“That's not true, we talk about other things. We’ve been talking about new magical ethics policies at Brakebills all morning.”

“No, _you and Eliot_ talked about magical ethics policies all morning.” Quentin rubbed his eyes, wishing it would all just go away. “I can’t do anything except research because I’m--” Quentin held his open hands in front of himself and gestured at himself “--broken.”

“What have you even tried to do to fix it?”

That wasn't fair. He’d never been a lich before, he didn’t know how to fix a lich any more than he knew how to fix a human--which he’d never had much luck with either.

Alice rolled her eyes when he didn’t respond, and grabbed his hand again. He could feel her again, through the ring. She cast a fire starting spell with her other hand, drawing from his power, and he felt some of the tension in his head recede.

“You don’t have to do it alone, Q, but I--we can’t help if you don’t say anything.”

That night, for the first time in a long time, he didn't impose himself on Eliot. He should've asked, really, if it was okay to sleep in Eliot's bed every night. He'd just assumed--and wanted. And wanted to not be alone.

His own bed was cold and smelled of dusty loneliness. Or maybe that was just himself.

Quentin ignored the tap on his door when it came. Eliot ignored him, too, and opened it anyway. He took a deep, fortifying breath before speaking into the dark room from the doorway.

“Whatever this game is, I don't like it. You're clearly torturing yourself about something, and that's… I know you need to work things out. But if you're avoiding me to torture yourself, don't. I didn't agree to that.”

Quentin mumbled into his pillow in response, and Eliot sighed. Quentin heard the door close, and held back tears.

When the bed settled next to him and Eliot's hand started rubbing circles on his back, he couldn't hold them back anymore.

“If you wanted to be tortured, all you had to do was ask,” Eliot said lightly. Quentin laughed into his tears and pushed himself up to sit cross legged facing Eliot. Eliot fussed with his hair while he got his breathing under control.

Eliot dropped his shoes on the floor and dragged his legs up onto the bed. He rearranged the pillows so that there was space for him there, just like Quentin had done the first few times he'd stayed in Eliot's bed for the night. Quentin wanted to kiss him, wanted to run away from all the questions and the worries and the uncertainty. He knew it wouldn't help. That didn’t mean Eliot had to put up with him trying to figure himself out, though.

He kept his hands to himself.

“You don’t need to babysit me while I fall apart, El. It was bound to happen sooner or later, being undead didn’t make me _not me_.”

“Ohhh-kay. You’re right, I don’t need to do anything. And it’s not like I can tell you that I don’t want to run away from this, from dealing with things in a meaningful way, because you know me. You know I’m more than happy to ignore this, if that’ll make it go away.”

Eliot hesitated, then pulled Quentin’s head over to put a kiss on his forehead.

“It’s not going to go away though, Q.”

“I know. It never does,” he said in a small voice. Eliot dropped his hands to Quentin’s knees, but stayed quiet; listening. “I just wonder what the point of coming back at all was, if I’m going to be useless. Alice had to help me release spell energy because I can’t do it myself. You should be in Fillory helping Margo but instead you’re here, because --”

“Because you want to stay close to Alice. I know.”

“You know, when I was a kid, I dreamed of being the high king of Fillory.”

“And when I was a kid, I wanted to kiss boys. Do you have a more obvious secret to tell?”

Quentin laughed, a little.

“Speaking from experience, it’s not as great as it sounds.”

Quentin tilted his head back to _really_ laugh, finally. When he looked back at Eliot, things were a little better. Eliot was still watching him, gently worried, but not afraid.

“No--it’s not, is it. But You can have a husband _and_ a wife, right? That’s allowed. I always… I’d forgotten how I always had a wife and a husband in my daydreams, before I got old enough to know that wasn’t realistic. Hey, don’t laugh!”

Because Eliot was smiling like he _might_ laugh at Quentin, at his stupid childish dreams.

“That’s...no that’s actually really adorable. But Q we all already talked about this. Alice and I are fine with--”

“I know. I know, it’s not the details or either one of you. It’s just _me_. I can’t do magic and you’re stuck here with me and Alice is disappointed in me.”

“Let’s unpack that, shall we? I’m not stuck anywhere, and I’m minorly offended you think I wouldn’t choose to be here with you. But more importantly? Alice isn’t disappointed in you.”

“She told me I wasn’t even trying.”

“To do what?” Eliot asked suspiciously.

“To do magic. I keep trying, and it feels like it’s just out of reach--”

“Q are you _sure_ she was talking about magic?”

“...what?”

“I don’t know why I forgot you were a dumbass for a minute there.” Eliot reached for Quentin’s right hand with his left, and threaded their fingers together.

“Heyyyy!”

“No, _love_ , if I’m going to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, you’re going to listen. Alice wants to jump your bones. All the while you’re over here pretending to be more patient than you’ve ever been in your entire life, thinking that’s what _she_ wants. Instead of asking her what she actually wants.”

“Really? You make it sound so simple. And what if--”

“Even if she was talking about magic, she still wants you to ask her for her help.”

Eliot toyed with Quentin’s ring. He and Alice both knew that Quentin could sense their emotions when they were in contact with it and yet they both--oh. They both did it on purpose, because they trusted him, and wanted him to understand their sincerity. Right.

Quentin let himself flop down onto the bed and then elbowed himself over until his head rested in Eliot’s lap, with their entwined hands now held above his head.

“You really want to sleep in here tonight? Your bed is nicer.”

Eliot accepted the change of topic. “You should have thought of that earlier.” He started loosening his tie one handed.

Quentin reached up with his hands and Eliot’s left hand up to Eliot’s neck to help. While Quentin worked upside down (but diligently) on Eliot’s tie, he started unbuttoning his vest and then his shirt.

“You made the knot worse didn’t you.”

“It’s upside down.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“Mmmmm,” Quentin responded, and tugged Eliot down by his tie into a kiss. “Maybe it’s better this way.”

Eliot dragged Quentin out of bed for breakfast in the morning. While Quentin drank coffee and eyed the extra bacon Eliot made, Eliot told him about his plan to go check out the clock tree in Fillory.

“Margo said it appeared not long before… well. Everything. So if it’s still there, maybe we can use it to fix things.”

“Only, Margo is knee deep in siege tactics, so she can’t go. So you have to?”

“Apparently she rather enjoys leading an army.” Eliot shrugged.

Alice came in from outside with a new set of books to add to their pile.

“I can go with--”

“You have things to figure out, _here_.” Eliot looked meaningfully in Alice’s direction.

“Right.” Quentin didn’t try to hide the sadness in his voice. It was, possibly, a little manipulative.

“You’re going to be fine, Q.” Eliot said, and then appended, “and I know what I’m doing. I’ll be careful.”

“Come back soon okay?”

Eliot kissed Quentin’s temple in response. “I’ll try.”

Alice took a slice of french toast and the leftover bacon. “We’ve been monitoring the time differences between Earth and Fillory. The 300-year gap is consistent with the flood of magic that came out of the mirrors. Since then there’ve only been minor deviations, like before.”

“Thanks, Alice.”

“But you should still be careful,” she told him.

Eliot hugged her then, and kissed her temple too.

Eliot grabbed a duffel bag from the base of the stairs before disappearing through the grandfather clock to Fillory.

“So what did--” “Am I in--” Quentin and Alice both tried to talk at the same time.

“You first,” Alice said.

“Okay uhm. I was going to ask what you brought back from the Library this time, but…” he trailed off. Just ask. “What I really wanted, I hoped you could maybe help me with my magic?”

Alice looked at him, patiently, waiting for more.

“It worked yesterday, when you drew from it, and it felt like--you remember the cooperative magic Mayakovsky made us do?”

“It was awful.”

“Yeah, but it felt really good.”

She smiled.

“It felt kind of like that, and it was like…I could feel the magic when you did it. I thought, maybe if we tried it together, if I have your help, I could do it. Because I can’t do it alone.”

“Okay.”

Quentin smiled, and she smiled back. They could do it, they could do magic together.

“So what were you going to say?”

Alice shook her head. “Nothing, it’s fine.”

“Mmk.” Quentin took another bite of french toast.

“The books are about messenger bunnies, by the way. I don’t think they’ll be useful, but I wanted to be sure.”

Quentin nodded. They wouldn’t leave their friends stranded in the past.

They tried the fire starting spell again first.

“You could feel it right? Let’s try that again. Focus on that feeling.”

He closed his eyes and chased the feeling of the spell down through his hand into Alice. She smelled like magic and wonder. The spell smelled like oxygen and flames. And it _glowed_.

Quentin dropped Alice’s hand when he _saw_ it. Not with his eyes, but with his magic. The whole world around him, like it had looked the night he’d come back. The wrong color, and a bit exaggerated. Hard to see some things, while others were screamingly bright. Magic, everywhere, and how it flowed in the air around them.

He just had to reach out and--it was easy to ignite it.

Alice’s hand on his face brought him back to reality.

“Q, can you hear me?”

She was worried.

That wasn’t right.

“Alice? Is everything okay?”

“Oh thank fuck. I thought you’d--I don’t know.”

“I accessed it. Whatever the weird lich powers we shoved into the ring are, I felt them. I had them.”

“You did it! It worked. How did it feel?”

“Good. Really good. But scary, like I couldn't control it.”

“Okay. We can work with that. But maybe we should do it somewhere you won't accidentally burn down our house.”

Quentin grabbed Alice's hand and pulled her out of the dining room. “Let's go!”

On the first day, Quentin could reliably connect to his lich magic after following the feeling of Alice's spellwork, but he couldn't form a specific spell with any precision--they pretty much all blew up in his face, leaving Alice to pull him out of lich mode.

On the second day, Julia came by to watch (and make fun of him). She suggested staying in the lich mode instead of trying to cast anything.

He spent a few minutes drifting in the sensation of magic and emotions before he focused on Alice. She was sitting on her hands, and she smelled like worry.

Julia asked her a question, but it didn't matter, so he didn't listen. _No, that's not right. It matters, of course it does_. When Julia addressed him directly, he forced himself to listen.

“Your eyes change when you do do it, I wonder if that means something.”

“I can...See. Magic, life. Connections.” The words were hard, and not letting the emotions overwhelm him was harder. Not shutting them out altogether was the hardest.

“Try casting a spell, Q,” Alice said. “Maybe something…” She looked around them. “Try mending something.”

“Here, Q.” Julia reached into her pocket and pulled out a card that had been ripped in two. The king of hearts.

“This is my…”

“Yeah, sorry. I was a little angry at you.”

Quentin didn't bother with any tuts. He knew this card, and what it was meant to be. He threaded a little bit of himself into the ambient magic, gathering it around the card. In moments it was fixed, ready to be put back into the deck.

He held the card and his magic for a moment longer, before letting the lich magic go.

“Here,” he said to Julia, handing the card back.

“You should keep it. It's your card.”

“Yeah, but it belongs with the others.”

“Okay, Q.”

On the third day Quentin woke up exhausted. He’d spent all day transforming into his lich state, doing magic, and transforming back. He still couldn’t do magic without going lich, and he couldn’t do it alone, but he had finally started to get control over his magic.

Alice sat in the living room reading about bunnies while Quentin drank coffee and pushed some instant oatmeal around a bowl with a spoon. He paged through a textbook on the basics of magic, wondering if there was anything he’d missed.

Quentin’s fingers buzzed like they’d been shocked, and he dropped his spoon. The feeling didn’t go away. But it felt like yesterday--

“Hey, Alice? Did you just cast a spell?”

“Hmm? Yeah. Why?”

“I felt it. Like I do when I’m--” Quentin gestures in front of his eyes.

“Blue Ghost Rider?”

“At least my head doesn’t turn into a skull, I guess.”

Alice giggled. It was the most gorgeous sound Quentin had ever heard.

“Well, try something!”

Quentin _reached_ for the feeling, and tried to levitate his spoon. The feeling fizzled. He shook his head, and shook the buzzing out of his fingers.

Alice set her book down and walked over to the table.

“What if we tried to together, at the same time.”

“Cooperative magic?”

“Yeah. Like training wheels.”

“Okay. Yeah. I'll follow your lead.”

Quentin pushed his chair back and set his spoon in the center of the table. Alice started the spell. Quentin watched her, followed along as she scribed out tuts in the air. He felt the spell take hold, and reached for it. Alice let go, and Quentin held his spoon suspended in the air.

The white stone on his ring glowed blue, but he didn't lich out.

For a moment, everything was okay.

He set the spoon down.

“I'm going to…” Quentin trailed off. Alice was smiling at him. He'd done it. Sort of. With training wheels, but it felt good.

“I’m gonna. Go. Put my books away.” Alice started to turn away from the table. “Finish your oatmeal before it gets cold, and we’ll try again?”

“Yeah.”

Quentin picked up his spoon manually, pulled his chair back to the table, and then set his spoon back down in his already-cold oatmeal. This was stupid.

“Alice wait.”

He followed her over to the couch where she’d left her books. She raised an eyebrow at him.

He hesitated.

“I--”

She kissed him.

A million questions fled Quentin’s mind. He wrapped his arms around Alice and remembered. And then forgot, and lost himself in _this_.

Alice tugged on Quentin’s shirt and he let her pull it off and drop it on the floor.

“Couch?” he asked.

She kissed him again. Then shook her head.

“Bed.”

He let her pull him by the hand up the stairs to her bedroom.

She stopped at her door and turned around, showing the first sign of uncertainty.

“You’re sure? I mean, not that we have to stop, but. I want to be us, _now_. Not just a memory.”

 

Quentin wrapped his arms around Alice and kissed her not with the intense passion that had driven him across the living room in the first place, but with the patience and intent that he wanted to convey to her, that he had no words for. Maybe a few words for.

“Alice, I love you. Here and now.”

She opened the door and pulled him into her bed.

Quentin could have spend the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in Alice’s bed, if she’d let him.

“I promised Kady I’d meet her for lunch to talk about the pipeline infrastructure project to reduce magical flooding and rebuild a reservoir. You’re welcome to come too, since Eliot’s not here to feed you.”

They were both tired of instant oatmeal and ramen noodles. On the other hand, though, he knew now what he could do, and if he just practiced a little, he was sure he could do it again.

“I felt it this morning. It was different, but, I can do it, I know that. I _need_ to be able to do magic.”

“How is it different?” Alice asked; always looking for more answers about magic. She pulled on a bathrobe but left it untied.

Quentin sat up in her bed and hugged a pillow to his chest, thinking.

“It’s like the difference between hot water and cold water. They’re both water, right? But they feel different. They taste different. And if you try to put boiling water in a styrofoam container meant for ice, it might melt.”

“I don’t think styrofoam melts at the boiling point, but I kinda get it. You keep trying to hold the magic like we do when we tut, but your connection to it is melting.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll figure it out. It’s a little like us.”

“Really hot?”

Alice smiled. “No, I mean. We’re different than who we were before, and we have some things to relearn. It’ll never be the same, and it can’t be. But this is really, really good, too.”

Quentin got up from the bed and pulled on the lapels of Alice’s robe.

“Are you sure? We could probably practice some more.”

Alice snorted. “I’m going to be late, Q. Practice your magic instead.”

She kissed his cheek and left to take a shower. Quentin let himself collapse backwards onto the bed, and closed his eyes. If he tried to concentrate only on his ring, he lost the bigger picture. But if he tried to think of just the bigger picture, he couldn’t draw on the magic. So he tried not to think at all.

There was magic all around him.

He didn’t reach for it, but at the edge of his senses, Quentin felt a group of summer students working on a project in the dorms. Dean Fogg mixed potions in his office. Nearby, Alice used a charm to dry her hair, and the clock downstairs surged, which could only mean one thing.

Well, okay, it could mean a lot of things, but one of them was better than the others, and Quentin stumbled around Alice’s room and into his discarded jeans before tripping down the stairs.

“Eliot.”

Eliot dropped his bag and sunk into Quentin’s arms.

“How long have I been gone? And where did the rest of your clothes go?”

“All over Alice’s bedroom floor,” Quentin grimaced, “and three days. How much time passed in Fillory?”

Eliot ruffled his hair. Quentin grabbed his discarded shirt off the floor as Eliot chose a couch to collapse onto. “Longer than that, but it’s complicated. It can wait. Josh is safe, and so is Fen--but they both stayed with Margo.”

There was something Eliot wasn’t saying. “Does that mean the revolution is over? Did you fix everything?”

Eliot shook his head. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Okay...okay. I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad you and Alice finally fucked.”

“Excuse me!” Alice said, leaning over the bannister.

“Hiii Alice. You look nice.”

“Thanks Eliot. You look like shit. Do you want me to cancel my lunch?”

“No, go. I’m gonna… sleep. We can have storytime with Eliot afterwards and I’ll relive all my poor life choices for everyone.”

“Okay.” She opened the front door to leave and then turned back. “I’m glad you made it home safe.”

“Thanks Alice.”

Quentin pulled on his shirt and inserted himself onto the couch under Eliot’s head. He had Alice’s books about rabbits, but he left them on the table. _Home_ , Alice had called it. The word echoed in Quentin’s mind. Not that he thought of the cottage as home, exactly, but with Alice and Eliot here, it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Extra lore: Eliot's adventures in Fillory are a whole story unto themselves involving time travel and hard choices. Fen and Josh are both pretty mad at him right now. 
> 
> There might be another story or two in the lich verse, I'm not sure. We'll see. 
> 
> Thank you to Cee for chatting about ideas and the RAO folks for encouragement!
> 
> (Constructive criticism welcome!)


End file.
